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Starship / Super Heavy

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Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#171

Post by dzhiurgis »

jccooper wrote: post #26
londons_explore wrote: post #4

Why the desalination plant? Is there not piped water? Is it just another eco friendly sounding thing to put in the plan? Is it to hedge against newspaper headlines saying how much water spacex is wasting? Desalination has to be more expensive than piped water (both financially and environmentally).

> Is there not piped water? Not, there is not. All water is currently delivered, and the nearest municipal water is over 15 miles away. Arranging for a water pipeline would not be cheap, but moreover would take a lot of time. Desalinization plant is plug and play; pipe is going to require a lot of bureaucracy besides a pretty fair capital investment.

Hard to believe 15 miles of roman technology cost more than super advanced solar + membranes plant.

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#172

Post by simonebrunozzi »

ubertoop wrote: post #72
divbzero wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This factoid [1] may soon need an update. [1]: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/largest-r... "Largest rocket"

Nice use of "factoid". Most people use this world incorrectly.

Ah, what would be the most common incorrect way to use it? Being a non-native English speaker I'm always fascinated to learn new things like this one.

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#173

Post by Tuna-Fish »

wongarsu wrote: post #53
sneak wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the environmental impact delta between a 12km launch and landing and an orbital launch and landing? I can't imagine the difference to the ground environment is that significant.

The Super Heavy Booster has an order of magnitude more engines than the Starship prototype that did the 12km hop. I don't think Starship can reach orbit without the booster (it can reach space, but not orbital velocity)

Calculations over at NSF made it clear that SN8 had sufficient delta-v on the pad to reach the Karman line, if they hadn't throttled back and turned off engines as it ascended. So SN8 could already have reached space. (With the assumption that the nose could have taken the pressure of going supersonic relatively low.)

Similar calculations state that a Starship with full tanks and 6 or 7 engines might just be able to make it into orbit on it's own, assuming it doesn't have any payload or heatshield.

Since that's useless and wastes the ship, they will never do it. But it still boggles the mind that they are using a craft that is almost a SSTO ship ... as a second stage, on top of a massive first stage. The Raptor engines are freakishly good, near the top in both efficiency and thrust.

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#174

Post by TeMPOraL »

ampdepolymerase wrote: post #121
cameronh90 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could launch from outside America. They've already said they plan to launch from floating platforms in the ocean...

There are exactly three other countries with the supply chain, manpower, funding, and infrastructure to build large scale commercial access to space. Not a single one of them are members of NATO. Space X doesn't really have many options.

You may be forgetting a bunch of other countries that do space together, and as a group they have "the supply chain, manpower, funding, and infrastructure to build large scale commercial access to space", and are members of NATO. That said, I haven't seen as much interest in commercial space launch vehicles over here as I'd like to.

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#175

Post by TeMPOraL »

vardump wrote: post #140
valuearb wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically Mercury is definitely more inhabitable than Venus.

Due to very thick atmosphere, giant airships should be doable on Venus. You'd get atmospheric radiation shielding, same pressure as on Earth (although obviously unbreathable air), ample sunlight and plenty of materials (=carbon and oxygen) in the form of Venusian atmospheric gasses. Although hydrogen would be hard to come by, the atmospheric concentration is very low. That said, I doubt there's that much hydrogen on…

I agree. IIRC, the atmosphere at the Earth-standard-pressure level isn't corrosive, so we could park our bases there, and there's an ISRU possibility through extending scoops (or sending drones) to lower atmosphere and siphoning some of the more resource-rich air there.

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#176

Post by iamcreasy »

blackrock wrote: post #141

What are the odds of Starship working? It seems really complex. And that last phase where the ship flips vertical from the bellyflop, looks insane for human passengers inside. How many G’s is that maneuver pulling? SN8 appears 90% successful, but I’m wondering if that remaining 10% is the killer. As they say: You spend 10% of your time, solving 90% of your problem. And then you spend 90% of your time, solving the las…

If you look back at how they learned about landing Falcon 9 first stage - they failed many times before succeeding : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#177

Post by TeMPOraL »

flenserboy wrote: post #64
suyash wrote: post #45

Next level space age begins, sooner we will be on Mars.

While it will be fun to see humans on Mars, the really interesting stuff is further out. Where large lifters like this will really shine is in allowing automated mining factories to be sent to various space rocks in order to allow further, larger projects to be built in place. Musk has been piggybacking technologies to fund future projects — I don't see Mars as an endpoint for his vision, and Mars will be a cash sink…

> While it will be fun to see humans on Mars, the really interesting stuff is further out. Where large lifters like this will really shine is in allowing automated mining factories to be sent to various space rocks in order to allow further, larger projects to be built in place.

The way I see it, a lot of interesting things are closer than Mars. There's plenty of space rocks near Earth, that could be nudged into Earth orbit and mined, ultimately enabling orbital construction. I'm hoping a whole economy in cislunar space will eventually take off. That would go a long way towards making servicing Mars cheaper, too.

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#179

Post by yalok »

zlsa wrote: post #48
doomlaser wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really interested in seeing how it will perform its "belly flop" landing. Seems like a high risk maneuver https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdTYMry7fq0#t=1m17s

They've already done it[0], and it was a complete success until a propellant pressure issue resulted in lower than needed thrust, and a hard impact on the pad. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qwLHlVjRyw

On landing video, I see only 2 engines turn on instead of 3 - why is that? Was one engine malfunctioning, or was it the result of low pressure?

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#180

Post by Tuna-Fish »

juanbyrge wrote: post #150
valuearb wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically Mercury is definitely more inhabitable than Venus.

How so? The dark side of Mercury is frozen and Mercury rotates very slowly (one day on mercury is 2 months on earth). If you had a rolling home base you maybe able to avoid the extreme heat.

Mercury has near-zero axial tilt, and massive craters on the poles. There glaciers on Mercury's south pole alone hold more water than all of Mars.

They are of course in eternal darkness, but if want an artificial sun, just raise a diffuse reflector over the crater rim. If you need more concentrated energy, raise a mirror.

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